61% of security leaders reported suffering from violations due to failure or misunderstanding of control over the past 12 months. This is despite having an average of 43 cybersecurity tools in place.
This massive security obstacle is clearly not a security investment issue. It’s a configuration issue. Organizations are beginning to realize that security controls installed or deployed are not necessarily security controls configured to protect against real threats.
Recent Gartner® reports reduce threat exposure with optimized security controls and address gaps between intent and outcomes. We feel it’s arguing a difficult truth. Without continuous verification and tuning, security tools provide a false sense of security.
In this article, we dig deeper into why control effects are a new benchmark for cybersecurity success and how organizations can make this shift.
The Myth of Tool Coverage
Buying more tools has long been considered key to cybersecurity performance. But the facts tell a different story. According to a Gartner report, “misconfiguration of technical security management is the main cause of the continued success of attacks.”
Many organizations have an impressive inventory of firewalls, endpoint solutions, identity tools, SIEM and other controls. However, the violation continues as these tools are often misunderstood, integrated, integrated or disconnected from actual business risks.
For example, the 2024 violation at Blue Shield in California caused misunderstanding of the website to generate personal data from 4.7 million members leaked via Google Ads. This obstacle has revealed that even everyday tools can undermine the security and compliance of an organization if they are misdirected or configured.
However, bridging the gap between the existence of security tools and their effectiveness requires fundamental changes in thinking and more fundamental changes in reality.
Shifts organizations to control effectiveness
It takes more than a few technical adjustments to move towards true control effects. There is a real shift in mindset, daily practice, and how teams across the organization work together. Success depends on stronger partnerships between security teams, asset owners, IT operations and business leaders. In particular, asset owners bring critical knowledge to the table. How to build a system, how sensitive data is born, which processes are too important for failure.
Supporting this collaboration means rethinking how teams train. Security professionals need more than technical skills. You need to have a deeper understanding of the assets you protect, the business goals these assets support, and the real-world threats that may affect them.
And it’s not just about teamwork or better training. Organizations also need a better way to measure whether controls are actually doing their job. This is where results-driven metrics (ODMS) and protection level contracts (PLAs). ODMS shows how quickly an incorrect shortage is fixed and how a real threat is detected. Plas set clear expectations about how defenses work against certain risks.
Together, these measurements move security from trust issues to evidence issues. They help organizations build resilience that can measure, manage and improve over time.
Continuous optimization is new normal
Measuring security effectiveness is an important first step, but maintaining it is where the real challenge begins. Security controls are not static. Regular tuning is required to remain effective as the threat evolves and businesses change. As Gartner states, “The best configuration for technical security controls is not the settings and focus or default settings, but the moving target.”
Teams treating the configuration as a one-off project are set to be behind. New vulnerabilities emerge, attackers shift tactics, and cloud environments evolve faster than annual audits can keep up. In this environment, patching your system once a quarter or checking your configuration once a year is not enough. Continuous optimization must become a part of your day.
This means taking a step back and making it a habit to ask difficult questions. Does our control still protect what is most important? Are our detection rules tailored to the threats we face today? Are our compensation measures still closing the correct gap? Or is it not syncing?
Keeping your defense sharp isn’t just about applying technical updates. It involves integrating real-world threat intelligence, reassessing risk priorities, and ensuring that your operational processes are increasingly secure. Security validity is not a box that you should check once. It’s something you build, test and refine – over and over.
Building for effectiveness: what needs to be changed
Making security controls truly effective requires broader changes in how organizations think and work. Security optimization must be embedded in the way systems are designed, operated and maintained – not treated as a separate feature.
Gartner points out that “security teams are not entirely effective on their own.” In XM Cyber’s view, this means that security needs to become a team sport. Organizations need to build a sensual team that brings together security engineers, IT operations, asset owners, and business stakeholders. Effective optimizations rely on understanding not only how controls work, but also on understanding what they are protecting, the behavior of those systems, and where the actual business risk lies.
Coordinating security control efforts with a broader, continuous exposure management programme can also help to build reproducible, structured ways to improve over time. Instead of responding to gaps after a violation, organizations can actively identify weaknesses, fine-tune controls, and measure progress towards real risk reduction as well as theoretical coverage. (Want to learn more about how to build a continuous exposure management platform? Read our guide here!)
Conclusion
Security wasn’t just about having the right tools. Understand whether these tools are ready to respond to the most important threats. Close the gap between the presence of a control and the effectiveness of the control requires more than a technical modification. It requires organizations to change their thinking, working and measuring success.
In our opinion, this new study from Gartner will make the message clear. Static defenses do not align with dynamic risks. Accepting continuous optimizations – tuning controls, verifying performance, and tuning security with real business priorities – will be resilient.
It’s still late to stand, at least if cybersecurity is involved. The future belongs to an organization that treats security as a living system – measured, adjusted and proven daily.
Note: This article was skillfully written and contributed by Dale Fairbrother, Director of Product Marketing at XM Cyber.
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