You hear it in boardrooms, in budget meetings, and in “quick updates” before the next agenda item: “We’ve never been attacked before.”
It sounds calm, feels reassuring, and also signals a blind spot: the business is measuring risk by what it has noticed, not by what is happening around it.
Most modern attacks don’t start with alarms. They start with quiet access: a reused password, a missed patch, an exposed API, a supplier account, or a convincing email. By the time the business “feels” attacked, the attacker may already have weeks of access. That is why leadership matters more than luck.
The Luck-Based Security Mindset
Luck-based security is not a plan. It is a posture. It treats cyber risk like bad weather: something that happens “to other companies.” It assumes yesterday’s calm will repeat tomorrow.
You will hear familiar lines:
- “We haven’t had an incident, so the controls must be fine.”
- “Security is important, but we have other priorities this quarter.”
- “We already pay for tools. That should cover it.”
- “Let’s wait until the new system goes live, then we’ll revisit.”
- “If something happens, insurance will handle it.”
None of these statements are evil. They are human but at the same time are incomplete. Tools do not equal resilience. Insurance does not prevent disruption. And postponing fixes usually increases cost and exposure.
This is where cybersecurity testing earns its place. Not as fear, but as evidence. Done well, cybersecurity testing tells you what is true today, not what you hope is true.
The Gambler’s Fallacy
The gambler’s fallacy is the belief that past outcomes change future probability. In security, it sounds like: “Because we haven’t been hit, we’re less likely to be hit.
The opposite is often closer to reality. If a business has never looked properly, it may have been hit and never noticed. Or it may be sitting on the kind of gaps that attackers routinely exploit—because nobody has measured them.
That is exactly what ethical hacking is for: controlled, legal attempts to break what you own, so criminals don’t do it first. Ethical hacking turns vague confidence into a clear list of priorities.
The Real cost
The financial argument is no longer abstract. IBM reported the global average cost of a data breach was US$4.45 million in 2023, then rose to US$4.88 million in 2024.
IBM’s 2025 report shows the global average at about US$4.4 million, still an extreme outcome for most organisations.
Even if your business sits below “global average,” the shape of the cost is consistent: operational downtime, incident response, legal support, customer churn, regulatory action, and reputational drag that lasts longer than the headlines.
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What These CEOs Are Actually Saying
When a CEO says “we’ve never been attacked,” they usually mean: “We haven’t seen evidence of an incident.” Or: “Nothing big has forced us to pay attention.” Attackers love small and mid-sized businesses because they often have:
- weaker identity controls
- flat networks
- limited monitoring
- rushed vendor onboarding
- fewer people who can respond quickly
Many attacks are automated. Bots do not care about your brand size. They care about your exposed login page, your unpatched software, and your cloud permissions.
This is why cybersecurity testing needs to be routine, not a one-off panic project. Regular checks reduce the odds that you become the “easy win” in someone’s automated campaign.
Every industry handles something valuable:
- money
- customer identities
- health data
- intellectual property
- operational continuity
- access to larger partners (supply chain)
If your company can invoice, process payroll, store customer records, or connect to suppliers, it has value to an attacker. Industry is not immunity.
This is where external validation helps. ISO 27001 information security auditors don’t exist to create paperwork. They exist to test whether your security management system is real, maintained, and evidenced—especially when leadership confidence runs ahead of controls.
Antivirus is one layer. Modern threats often bypass it through identity compromise, cloud misconfiguration, and social engineering. If an attacker logs in using a real account, your antivirus may never get a vote.
This is why ethical hacking remains so useful. Ethical hacking simulates real attacker behaviour: credential abuse, lateral movement, weak access controls, and exposed interfaces. It shows what gets past your “basic” defences.
The Leadership Gap
Cybersecurity is not only a technical issue. It is a decision-making issue. It exposes how leaders value evidence, accountability, and preparedness.
Reactive security waits for an incident, then scrambles. Proactive security asks:
- What would hurt us most?
- Where are we weakest today?
- Can we detect and contain quickly?
- Do we have proof of “reasonable steps”?
Proactive programs schedule assessment, triage, uplift, and re-testing. That cycle is how risk falls over time.
- Why cybersecurity is a business decision, not just IT
Cyber incidents affect revenue, operations, legal exposure, and customer trust. That places cybersecurity in the same category as finance controls, safety controls, and compliance controls. Treat it like governance, not gadgets.
- Fiduciary responsibility and legal liability
Boards and executives are expected to manage material risks. When a breach occurs, regulators, customers, and insurers ask: What did you do before the incident? A security program without evidence can look like negligence, even when the team meant well.
Using ISO 27001 information security auditors strengthens that evidence trail. It helps demonstrate structure: risk assessment, control ownership, review cadence, and continuous improvement.
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What Real Leadership Looks Like
Real leadership does not panic. It prepares. It funds what it can prove matters.
- Treating cyber risk like any other business risk
Start with a risk view the board understands: crown jewels, key systems, top threats, and measurable control gaps. Then prioritise remediation based on likelihood and impact, not on whoever shouts loudest.
- Building security into company culture
Culture is what happens when no one is watching. Leaders can set simple expectations:
- MFA is non-negotiable for key systems
- patching has owners and deadlines
- suppliers must meet minimum controls
- staff training is ongoing, not annual theatre
- incidents get reported early, not hidden
- Investing before the breach, not after
Budgeting for prevention is cheaper than funding crisis response. Combine operational controls with proof: scheduled cybersecurity testing, and periodic review by ISO 27001 information security auditors. When you add ethical hacking into the schedule, you gain a view of real-world exposure, not just policy compliance.
“We’ve never been attacked before” is not comfort—it is uncertainty. Leadership replaces uncertainty with measurement: routine testing, clear ownership, and evidence-based improvement. Luck runs out. Preparedness scales.
Cybernetic Global Intelligence provides governance, risk and compliance services (including ISO 27001), security assessments such as penetration testing and red team work, plus incident response and managed security services.
Start with a short discovery call to map your current posture, your top systems, and immediate risk-reduction actions. Then scope a practical plan: targeted assessment, remediation, and re-test.
If leadership is ready to replace luck with a defensible security program, contact Cybernetic GI to book an initial security review and build a testing cadence that fits your business.