Cybersecurity Insights with Contrast CISO David Lindner | 05/02/25

Insight No. 1 — Know which vulnerabilities are active in production

Consider this: your pre-production scans might flag hundreds of vulnerabilities, but which ones are actually being exploited in your live environment? The uncomfortable truth is that without visibility into your production runtime, you're operating in the dark, potentially focusing resources on threats that pose minimal immediate risk while critical exposures remain unseen. The strategic imperative now is to implement robust controls within production to gain that crucial visibility, allowing for informed prioritization and a tangible reduction in your organization's true security risk.

Insight No. 2 — Agentic AI: A critical point for security

The emergence of agentic AI presents a critical juncture for security leadership. While the allure of automation and speed is strong, dismissing the well-documented limitations of generative AI would be a strategic error. Long-term security posture will depend on a balanced integration, maximizing benefits while actively mitigating inherent flaws.

Insight No. 3 — The silent risk of vanished open-source

Consider the scenario: A widely used open-source library, integral to your infrastructure, simply vanishes. No notice, no support, just gone. While the proposed OpenEoX standard attempts to bring order to end-of-life disclosures, the silent threat posed by abandoned open-source projects — briefly mentioned but critically understated — represents a significant vulnerability demanding immediate strategic attention from technical security teams.