Cybersecurity is now recognized as a key priority for U.S. businesses. However, cybersecurity threats are evolving as risks, and the responses necessary to mitigate them, change rapidly. Staying a step ahead of bad actors is a continuous challenge and businesses—despite their intentions to do so—aren’t always keeping pace.
To solve this problem, IT leaders must understand why. They need answers to questions such as, how is cybersecurity transforming? How are cyberattacks harming businesses? Where must investments in preventative training and tools be focused? Is cybersecurity being prioritized by leadership? And how does cybersecurity fit within organizational culture?
In partnership with Sapio Research, Keeper Security analyzed the behaviors and attitudes of 516 IT decision-makers in the U.S. to answer these questions and more. This report, Keeper’s second annual U.S. Cybersecurity Census, maps the transforming landscape of cybersecurity based on these expert insights. It provides leaders with a forensic assessment of the threats their businesses face and details the urgent strategies necessary to overcome them.
Businesses across the U.S. are making cybersecurity a priority. However, despite efforts and investments, clear gaps remain. Our research shows that there have been small steps, but no giant leaps.
The volume and pace at which threats are hitting businesses are increasing, and leadership can’t afford to wait. If they do, the financial, reputational, and organizational penalties will be severe. Likewise, as work has transformed dramatically over the past two years—with hybrid and remote working normalized— companies need to rethink how they are building cybersecurity resilience.
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Shadow encryption was introduced in July 2021 when the ransomware gang Conti allegedly introduced LockFile. The LockFile ransomware variant used intermittent encryption to encrypt every 16 bytes of a file, leaving the rest unimpacted.This was specifically designed to evade detection by tools that look for obvious signs of encryption through unusual change in data compression rates.
Intermittent encryption changed the game as it was a challenge to detect. Data that was corrupted by LockFile did not generate the "signals" that most tools could detect and alert on. However, the bad actors didn't stop there. They continued to use technology to improve and advance their arsenals. Data encryption is a common approach to variants in their arsenals.With intermittent encryption being just the start, LockFile became one of the most prominent crime families in the ransomware game. Many took notice of this and continued to embrace shadow encryption and took it to the next level.
Around the same time that LockFile launched the Chaos ransomware variant was introduced. This variant took shadow encryption to the next level and utilized another form of shadow encryption based on Base64 algorithms. Base64 encoding helps conceal the true nature of ransomware corruption. By converting binary data into an ASCII string format, it makes the malicious code less recognizable to security tools and easily goes undetected. This approach deepened the bad actors shadow encryption strategies and generated great success in impacting organizations and forcing them to pay ransoms.
Forward Networks co-founder Nikhil Handigol explains how organisations can harness agentic AI in networking and security without jeopardising reliability.
What makes AI “agentic” – Unlike chatbots, agentic systems pursue goals, choose their own tools and act autonomously. Market researchers expect the segment to surge from US $5.1 billion in 2025 to more than US $47 billion by 2030, and Gartner predicts that one-third of enterprise software will embed such capabilities by 2028. Upside for networks – Agents can:remediate newly disclosed vulnerabilities or block malicious traffic,resolve connectivity issues and reroute flows around failures,analyse patterns to predict and prevent impending outages. These abilities promise dramatic efficiency gains for short-staffed IT teams and better user experience. Risks to manage – Because an agent can act without human oversight, a mis-trained model or bad data could break compliance, introduce downtime or even cause physical harm. “Trust but verify” must therefore guide every deployment.Build the data bedrock – Autonomy is only as sound as the data it relies on. Enterprises need a complete, accurate record of every device, configuration and packet path. A network digital twin—a mathematically precise, continuously updated software replica of the live environment—provides that single source of truth. Digital twins as guardrailsPre-change simulation: Before any AI-driven or manual change, test it exhaustively in the twin to catch policy violations, compliance breaks or connectivity loss.Continuous verification: Twin-based rules monitor live behaviour and alert operators to drift or emergent problems. With this safety layer, CIOs can accelerate agentic AI adoption while preserving control.Bottom line – Agentic AI’s promise in networking is real, but benefits accrue only if robust data pipelines and digital-twin guardrails are in place. When those prerequisites are met, AI agents can handle routine operations and incident response, freeing humans for higher-value work and increasing organisational resilience.
GigaOm’s “Radar for Network Validation” (2024) addresses the growing need for enterprise-grade network assurance tools that validate architecture intent, enforce policies, and ensure compliance. The report establishes clear metrics—such as source-of-truth fidelity, breadth of validation, simulation capabilities, and ease of integration—as foundational evaluation criteria.
In this latest edition, Forward Networks is ranked as a top-tier “Outperformer” for the third consecutive year, earning placement close to the coveted “bullseye” that denotes market leadership. The report highlights Forward Enterprise’s strengths:Scalable Modeling & Path Analysis: A mathematically accurate digital twin can model state across 50,000+ devices and diverse public-cloud deployments, simulating end-to-end paths across Layers 2–4 and even Layer 7. This enables exhaustive pre-change validation and forensic path tracing.Compliance & Security Verification: The platform verifies that configurations adhere to compliance standards and security policies before deployment.Hybrid-Cloud Flexibility: Forward supports complex environments spanning on-premises and cloud infrastructures.Visualization & Forensics: Users can query network state “like a database,” visualize flows, and trace live or historical behavior to troubleshoot or investigate incidents.Why Forward stands out: GigaOm praises its technical excellence, calling out its performance across end-to-end validation, compliance/security verification, hybrid cloud support, and rich visualization features that outpace most of its 13 peer vendors.