As the arms race between cybercriminals and cybersecurity operators continues, cyberattacks have become more and more sophisticated - and the need for advanced cybersecurity solutions to counter them has increased. But the term can feel nebulous, so what does it actually mean to be advanced?
Advanced cybersecurity incorporates three key principles:
These three elements, together, ensure a rock-solid security foundation, and without all three, a solution, while still modern, can’t be considered advanced.
Advanced cybersecurity solutions must be integrated into your process, as opposed to reactive or bolted-on, because that integration directly enhances efficacy, speed of response, manageability, and resilience. It does so by increasing threat visibility, allowing for faster incident response and more effective automation, and reduces operational complexity and cost. Integrating cybersecurity as left in the software development lifecycle (SDLC) as possible ensures you realize those benefits as early as possible and have an exponential effect.
For example, poor code security is a significant contributor to vulnerabilities in modern applications, spawning high-severity risks such as injection and cross-site scripting, and data breaches can result from significant vulnerabilities created during software development due to misconfiguration or poor coding practices. According to a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) report, exploits of vulnerabilities at the software layer, which includes flaws stemming from poor code security and insecure development practices, are a significant concern. The movement of the industry toward shift-left highlights the fact that many of the vulnerabilities can be mitigated or prevented by integrating security into the coding and design stages.
Providing developers with real time detection and one-click remediation within their IDE, as they write code and before it gets anywhere close to security teams, provides the most manageability and fastest possible response time by solving problems before they become problems at all. It also substantially increases resilience by addressing security problems at the root as opposed to after the fact, allowing it to scale seamlessly across teams and organizations.
As mentioned above, the best and fastest way to address problems is in real time, like how spellcheck picks up and solves spelling errors. However, advanced cybersecurity solutions go beyond that and into education.
Education has long been one of the most powerful tools cybersecurity professionals have in combating cyberattacks. Being proactive and ensuring that employees know about threats and understand how to spot them minimizes human error - according to the Verizon 2023 Data Breach Investigations Report, human error is responsible for 74% of cybersecurity breaches, with employee training reducing security incidents substantially according to CISA.
Advanced cybersecurity solutions not only offer that education, but integrate it into the workflow in a way that maintains productivity. Most importantly, however, the training needs to be modified for the trainee, because what is effective training for the marketer may not be effective or sufficient for the developer. In an simplistic example, everyone in the organization needs to have regular training on how to spot phishing, but not everyone needs to know how to spot and fix an overly permissive regular expression. This knowledge is historically reserved for security teams, not the people ultimately responsible for fixing them (developers), and when the KPI is speed and not security, even having that knowledge may not stop vulnerabilities from being committed.
But deploying this training in a way that works with the developer, like where and when the vulnerability was created, and doesn't stand in the way of their speed, makes the learning much more impactful. The goal isn’t to check boxes, the goal is to create a culture of security and make security institutional knowledge for employees, and the only way to do that is by training them where they are and with courses that are impactful.
AI has fundamentally changed the way we work by providing a tool that matches our ambition for speed. It’s no surprise, then, that its application would extend to coding.
2025 has seen a significant increase in vibecoding, where developers “talk” to a Large Language Model (LLM) by describing features, asking for fixes, or brainstorming implementations and let the AI handle the heavy lifting. Developers using GenAI tools like Copilot work 55% faster and increase productivity by 26%, and Gartner predicts 75% of devs will be coding with AI by 2028.
However, a recent study provides yet another warning that, when GenAI is used without security oversight, it amplifies risk. 40% of AI-generated code contains vulnerabilities, and even a modest 25% uptick in AI usage leads to a 7.2% drop in delivery stability, per the latest DORA report. So how can teams harness that productivity without security slowing them down?
Advanced cybersecurity solutions use the power of AI to identify problems and offer solutions as quickly as they are introduced, but also to provide much needed context in both security fixes and training. False positives are a pain, but an AI that can learn that it's a false positive and why it's a false positive can keep that mistake from happening again. AI can offer a remediation for a given vulnerability, but with the right guidance can also provide that fix in context so that it doesn't break functionality or introduce other vulnerabilities.
AI solves the training problem above by offering hyper-focused, tailored training to individual users according to what they're currently on. This maximizes learning impact through a combination of active learning and minimizing the time it takes to use that knowledge. It can also assess proficiency and deliver even more effective training modules on the fly, tailored to new developers, seasoned developers, security teams, and more.
The more proactive and integrated your security approach, the faster and more secure you’ll be. Effective cybersecurity requires an understanding of your technology, team, workflows, and continuous security education - and advanced cybersecurity solutions to facilitate them all.
With cutting-edge solutions using hyper-focused, incredibly accurate code security AI, real-time vulnerability avoidance, and tailored just-in-time learning, you can empower developers to prevent security issues before they arise and get in their way. This approach ensures security is embedded seamlessly into development workflows, eliminating friction, accelerating workflows, and enhancing security posture at the source.
As cyber threats continue to evolve in complexity, the need for advanced cybersecurity has never been greater and requires a holistic, proactive approach to security. By integrating deeply into the software development lifecycle, providing continuous education, and leveraging the power of AI, advanced cybersecurity helps prevent vulnerabilities before they’re exploited.
In a rapidly changing cyber landscape, adopting an advanced approach to security is no longer optional - it’s essential.
