CYBERSECURITY
As Matt Caulfield, Cisco’ s VP of Identity & Duo, notes from the report:“ 94 % of leaders believe that complexity in identity infrastructure decreases their overall security.” This complexity is the fog of modern cyber war, creating blind spots that attackers are quick to exploit.
The necessary response is a radical shift in security philosophy“ The days of organisations having the luxury of a‘ trust but verify’ approach are over,” comments Jeetu Patel, formerly Executive Vice President and General Manager of Security and Collaboration and now President and Chief Product Officer at Cisco.“ In today’ s complex and hyper-distributed world, organisations must‘ never trust and always verify,’ taking a Zero Trust approach to security.”
The SolarWinds attack serves as a stark blueprint for this failure of trust. Nation-state actors compromised the software build process of SolarWinds’ Orion platform by embedding malicious code into legitimate software updates, gaining trusted access to the networks of up to 18,000 customers, including US government agencies. The attack’ s brilliance was in its subversion of identity and trust: turning a verified software update into a master key.
94 %
Leaders who believe that identity complexity decreases their overall security
216 November 2025