There’s something about the start of a new year that invites fresh perspective. The calendars reset, inboxes refill, and we all quietly hope this is the year things feel a little more manageable. In cybersecurity, that optimism is often met with reality — not because we’re pessimists, but because experience teaches us to ask the right questions early.
A friend recently joked that when someone tells a cybersecurity professional they’ve been compromised, our instinctive response is, “Was MFA enabled?” It’s our version of IT’s most infamous question: “Did you try rebooting it?” Funny, yes — but also revealing. The most important safeguards are often the simplest, and the most overlooked.
That’s one of the things I love about this industry. Beneath all the complexity, progress still comes from curiosity, thoughtful communication, and a willingness to slow down just enough to get the fundamentals right.
