“Detect and Respond” is Not the Answer: The Need for Proactive Zero-Day Data Security

Cybersecurity defenses are more advanced than ever, yet maintaining their overall effectiveness remains a persistent challenge. Cybercriminals are always on the offensive, continually refining their tactics to outmaneuver every new security innovation brought to market, especially in the era of AI.

Fortunately, the ball is in our court. We have the means to adapt, but little time to respond. If we lack urgency or respond with the wrong strategies and solutions, we will see billions in new ransomware costs, more insidious nation-state attacks, further encroachment on our personal data, and the potential expansion of physical-space attacks. We need to get it right.

The Acceleration of Zero-Day Attacks

Today’s fight is against zero-day attacks and unknown malware, which have proliferated with the widespread use of generative AI tools in the hands of cybercriminals. Bad actors can now generate and modify new attacks with tools easily found on the dark web, allowing them to launch attacks with alarming speed and regularity. It’s adding overwhelming pressure to defenders who must be continually vigilant against new tactics and behaviors.

Since 2018, the number of zero-day attacks has been on the rise. Recent research from IBM, Cisco, and Google document the alarming increase: more zero-day attacks were reported in 2021 than in the prior three years combined; in 2023, 97 zero-day attacks were reported, beating the high of 2021. In May 2024, Rapid7 published the following in their Threat Intelligence Report:

“A consistently high level of zero-day exploitation over the last three years. Since 2020, our vulnerability research team has tracked both scale and speed of exploitation. For two of the last three years, more mass compromise events have arisen from zero-day exploits than from n-day exploits. 53% of widely exploited CVEs in 2023 and early 2024 started as zero-day attacks.”

What makes these attacks particularly concerning is that they target undefended, unknown vulnerabilities. Their effects are wide-reaching and catastrophic, leaving organizations to defend against breaches that have already happened, rather than proactively preventing them from happening in the first place.

In 2024, the average cost of ransomware rose across industries, reaching $5.2 million by mid-year. The price of remediation grew alongside the price of ransom. In addition to the dollar cost of these attacks, organizations face reputation damage, and SOC teams face yet another escalation in pressure, contributing to growing levels of burnout.

Traditional “detect and respond” cybersecurity tools and strategies are no longer effective. A solution that can not only detect never-before-seen malware, but prevent it, is not only necessary—it’s the only path forward. AI-powered zero-day data security (ZDDS) is the answer.

The Abrupt Decline of Legacy Solutions

The accelerating scale and sophistication of modern cyberattacks, particularly zero-day exploits, have rendered reactive methods ineffective. Attacks happen so quickly today that by the time a breach is detected, attackers have already encrypted or exfiltrated sensitive data. This speed makes reactive approaches not only futile but also costly in terms of recovery and damage control.

Even with tools boasting high detection rates, a small miss rate—say, 5%—can result in catastrophic breaches when facing thousands of daily threats. And most tools aren’t anywhere near that efficient.

The reality is that organizations can no longer afford to rely on outdated detection methods or wait for an attack to happen before acting. Unfortunately, much of the cybersecurity market isn’t positioned to deal with these threats.

Zero-day threats are particularly difficult to defend against using legacy security measures. Malware slips past defenses, unrecognized and undetected, landing in storage or on user machines. Popular signature-based tools are now a liability because:

• The updates necessary to try and keep pace are unsustainable
• They typically only catch known threats
• The underlying technology is outdated
• Management costs have ballooned
• The LLM weapons used by criminals, so-called DarkAI, are more advanced than the ML used by legacy tools

The only way to combat this surge of attacks without completely closing an environment off from the outside world is by using a solution specifically designed to combat zero-day attacks.

The Path Forward: Zero-Day Data Security

Preventative ZDDS, powered by deep learning (DL)—the most advanced form of AI—is the future of cybersecurity. Deep Instinct is at the forefront of this effort. We use our purpose-built DL cybersecurity framework to prevent and explain unknown threats in real time. We fight AI with better AI and help organizations dramatically reduce their exposure to malware, ransomware, and zero-day attacks.

The ability to stop an attack in its tracks—before it’s even identified by a “signature”—is the key to staying ahead in a rapidly evolving threat landscape. Moving from a reactive approach to a proactive strategy is necessary as cyberattacks increase in volume and sophistication.

Organizations must invest in technologies focused on fighting the future of cybercrime. This means being bolder in taking on new contracts, integrating new solutions more swiftly, and putting less effort towards trying to make existing tools do something they were not designed to do.

Waiting for an attack to happen—and then reacting—is simply too risky. The costs, both financially and reputationally, are too high. The price of an effective cybersecurity solution is a fraction of the cost of a breach.

Conclusion

With AI-driven threats, zero-day vulnerabilities, and the overwhelming scale of cyberattacks, you can’t afford to innovate slowly. Your enemies aren’t. They’re harnessing every possible AI tool to achieve their goals and finding it easier than ever to break through underperforming and overwhelmed defenses. Beleaguered security teams can no longer hope that their detection systems will catch everything, because they won’t.

Deep Instinct is the leading ZDDS vendor on the market. Deep Instinct Data Security X (DSX), is the first and only purpose-built ZDDS product built from the ground up on the world’s only DL cybersecurity framework to prevent and explain unknown threats no one else can find. It provides unparalleled protection against zero-day threats across your entire data ecosystem with unmatched prevention capabilities, real-time malicious verdicts, and detailed explainability, solving the growing problems of cybersecurity.

To learn more about how to proactively protect your organization and its data, no matter where it resides, read about our approach to ZDDS here. Then request your free scan.